The Colosseum is the most familiar of all Roman buildings.
It has appeared in movies and video games.
It has been featured on everything from Olympic medals to pizza boxes.
It has been studied, painted, engraved, and drawn for six centuries.
Every year, millions of tourists visit its ruins.
Yet there are many things we still don’t know about the most famous ancient amphitheater.
For example: were naval battles ever staged in the Colosseum?
A naumachia – mock naval battle – was the most expensive and most brutal of all
Roman spectacles.
One staged by emperor Claudius on the Fucine Lake involved 100 ships and 19,000 combatants,
all criminals and prisoners of war who were expected to fight to the death.
In Rome, Augustus constructed a huge basin for naumachiae, and sponsored a fight with
30 large ships, 3,000 fully armed marines, and thousands of rowers.
Most later emperors used this basin for their naumachiae, though Nero staged two in a temporary
wooden amphitheater.
Both Titus and Domitian, the emperors who completed the Colosseum, are said to have
shown naumachiae there.
In one of his epigrams on the Colosseum’s inaugural games, held by Titus in 80 AD, the
poet Martial marvels at “the waves of the sea, where there was dry land moments before.”
The historian Cassius Dio, apparently describing the same event, notes that the naumachia reenacted
a naval battle of the Peloponnesian War, and that it was proceeded by a display of swimming
horses and bulls.
Many scholars, however, are dubious that a nuamachia could have been staged in the Colosseum.
Unless they were the size of rowboats, only a few ships could have maneuvered within the
relatively restricted space of an amphitheater.
The lead pipes that fed the Colosseum’s water fountains seem inadequate to the task
of rapidly filling an artificial lake.
And the chambers and passageways under the arena would have been difficult to drain.
It is sometimes suggested that our sources are mistaken or misinterpreted.
Titus is known to have staged aquatic events in the artificial lake of Augustus, and Domitian
built a temporary lake of his own nearby; perhaps these were conflated with the Colosseum.
Scholars who prefer to trust the testimony of our sources have suggested an alternative
solution.
The Colosseum’s hypogeum – the intricate network of cages, corridors, and elevators
beneath the arena – was completed years after the rest of the building.
Originally, it is argued, this was a relatively simple system of tunnels, covered by beams
and a wooden floor that could have been removed before a naumachia.
The fact that the hypogeum was lined with waterproof mortar may suggest that the builders
of the Colosseum anticipated the space being submerged.
But the four sewers that drained it seem designed to carry away rainwater, not the millions
of gallons needed for a naumachia.
Even if the arena were only filled to the depth of a few feet, it would have taken hours
to drain.
Unless new evidence comes to light, we will never know for certain whether naval battles
were staged in the Colosseum – and this is just one of the mysteries surrounding the
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Returning to our topic.
Many features of the Colosseum are difficult to explain.
In an older video, for example, I explored the mysterious tunnel known as the Cryptoporticus
of Commodus.
Since it leads in the direction of the imperial palace, and boasts a richly-decorated ceiling
and walls, some scholars have concluded that it was the emperor’s private entrance.
Or it may have served a completely different purpose, such as bringing statues of the gods
up to the arena.
Since only a short section has been excavated, we simply don’t know.
Even on the surface, matters are confused.
Take the ring of bollards – stone pillars – that stood around the perimeter of the
Colosseum, at a distance of 18 m from the entrance gates.
Five are still intact on the east side; originally, there were probably 80.
It has been suggested that the bollards were anchors for the velaria – awnings – that
protected spectators from the sun.
Those awnings were suspended from tall wooden posts that socketed into corbels along the
arena’s attic.
By a method still unclear to scholars, the 240 posts supported a lattice of ropes, over
which marines from the imperial navy retracted and spread sheets of sail-like canvas.
Some scholars believe that the bollards were components of a system that kept the ropes
of the velaria in tension.
The posts, however, are not deeply embedded enough to resist serious pressure.
And during the games, all those long ropes would have seriously disrupted the flow of
spectators in and out of the arena.
It seems more likely that the bollards were nothing more or less than crowd control barriers,
supporting ropes or chains that funneled people toward the 76 public entrances where their
tickets were checked.
Some very basic questions about the Colosseum remain unanswered.
We aren’t even sure why it’s called the “Colosseum.”
To the Romans, it was simply Amphitheatrum – “the amphitheater.”
It’s often said that the original “Colosseum” was the gigantic statue of Nero (later rebranded
as the sun god) beside the arena, and that the name was only transferred to the amphitheater
around the tenth century, after the statue had vanished.
By this interpretation, the famous lines attributed to the Venerable Bede – “As long as the
Colosseum stands, Rome will endure; when the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall; and when
Rome falls, the world” – refer to the statue, not the amphitheater.
But all this is conjecture.
It’s possible that “Colosseum” always referred to the amphitheater.
For all we know, people were calling Rome’s most imposing building the “colossal amphitheater”
– Amphitheatrum Colosseum – even before the empire fell.
We also have no clear idea how many spectators the Colosseum could hold.
The only ancient source to give a number is a fourth-century survey of the monuments and
marvels of Rome.
This document claims that the Colosseum had 87,000 loca.
Although loca normally means “seats,” it’s hard to believe that there was ever
room for so many in the Colosseum.
Depending on the height of each row, the Colosseum had between 45 and 50 rows of stone seats,
with additional wooden tiers in the maenianum summum, the highest section.
Some scholars believe that the total length of the amphitheater’s seating was 20,000
m.
Assuming that each spectator received about 44 cm of space, that gives a total capacity
of about 40-45,000.
Other estimates, positing shorter rows and a steeper maenianum summum, suggest that the
Colosseum may have had up to 26,000 m of seating, which would have allowed as many as 70,000
spectators to crowd in.
All of this is guesswork, since every one of the Colosseum’s seats was torn out during
the Middle Ages (the small section of seating visible today is an inaccurate twentieth-century
restoration).
Scholars who want to reconcile modern estimates with the number of loca given by our sole
ancient source sometimes suggest that 87,000 was the measurement of the seating area in
Roman feet.
Though not impossible, this is unprovable – like so much else about the most famous
and notorious ancient monument.
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